Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The McCain Justification

Although I applaud your constitutional amendment to deny homosexuals the special right of marrying the people they love, I'm concerned about your failure to address the issue of when heterosexual marriages should end. By omitting any mention of justifiable divorce from this amendment, you seem the be suggesting that marriage should be an irrevocable act. I fear that such a stance may harm Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign.

Opponents to the amendment will certainly ask why you would cite homosexual unions as a threat to marriage while ignoring divorce. They are likely to point to Sen. McCain's marriage history as an example of this.

You can blunt such criticism by adding what I call the "McCain Justification" to the measure. I've drafted some language to help you:

Inasmuch as marriage is a sacred covenant between a man, a woman, and Our Lord Jesus, no divorce shall be granted in the State of California unless the wife is crippled in a car accident.

I like this language because it provides cover for Sen. McCain in two ways. first, it gives him an excuse for leaving his wife because he did not want to deal with her paralysis (it also works metaphorically as a justification for his vote to support torture after it became politically inconvenient for him to oppose it .)

Secondly, it provides him with cover for the way he treats his current wife. His psychological abuse of her--calling her a trollop and a cunt, etc--would not be seen as being an offense so serious it would justify divorce. And perhaps even more importantly, it would send a signal to the women of California that patriarchy is back, just like God intended.